There was one other unusual hazing death from the 1970s that I wanted to include in this video… but ultimately I just couldn’t find enough imagery to cover it. Here’s a newspaper article I did locate, though, that covers the death of Thomas Fitzgerald during a fraternity hazing in 1976.
Unusually, the accident wasn’t a result of alcohol consumption. Instead, the “pledges” were taken out to a small island and interrogated as though they were prisoners of war. This included menacing them with a bayonet.
Fitzgerald had been fitted with a wooden guard so that his captors could pretend to stab him with the knife without actually hurting him. Predictably, this slipped and he was fatally stabbed.
To make an already-bizarre accident even worse, the university refused to acknowledge that it was a hazing, insisting that it simply couldn’t be because hazing was illegal. Instead, they said, the students had simply gone out to the island for “extra training”. An odd way of putting it, to say the least!
Fascinating Horror
2024-04-01 14:36:18 +0000 UTCMilo OJ
2024-03-30 17:10:15 +0000 UTCFascinating Horror
2024-03-25 16:04:29 +0000 UTCFascinating Horror
2024-03-25 16:03:48 +0000 UTCAngela Schwartz
2024-03-21 01:17:29 +0000 UTCElizabeth Finkler Hanasaki
2024-03-20 01:55:41 +0000 UTC